nerdy stuff reinout | 04 Dec 2009 02:47 pm
Respecting other people’s opinions
Today, Martijn Cielen accused me of not respecting his personal opinion and of being a Mono evangelist. This was all prompted by the announcement of a Mono devroom at FOSDEM. Normally I steer clear of the Mono vs Novell vs Miguel vs Microsoft debates but I do stand up for the right of people to develop Free software for whatever platform in whatever language they choose to! Here’s what I replied:
Dear Martijn,
Your personal opinion is crystal clear to me. Why are you suggesting that I don’t respect it? If anything I said leads you to believe that, please point it out. It certainly wasn’t meant that way.
If the quote you mention from the MS tech evangelist, made in the context of competition with IBM OS/2 and Netscape Navigator, was meant to convey a point, then indeed I am afraid I missed it. Could you please state it more clearly?
As for your list of reasons to avoid Mono, I will simply let them speak for themselves.
For the record, I haven’t used any MS products on my PC since Windows 3.11 and I am a professional Java developer. Calling me a Mono evangelist is unfounded and pointless.
Have a nice day!
I hope someday people will quit putting energy in stopping other people from writing great software, and start putting it in writing great software themselves instead!
on 04 Dec 2009 at 16:20 1.Stephane said …
on 05 Dec 2009 at 11:33 2.wobo said …
I think the point is not that you or any other may or may not write code on this platform or that. The point is how the fact that known and prominent persons are writing code on a specific platform may influence others, what kind of signal a known developer may send by writing code on a specific platform.
Like it or not, as soon as you have a reputation you are influencing other people with what you do or do not.
on 05 Dec 2009 at 18:41 3.Jo Shields said …
http://www2.apebox.org/wordpress/wp-content/gallery/00-single/oh-look-a-meme2.png
on 05 Dec 2009 at 22:36 4.wow said …
The jackass you linked to is pretty typical behavior of the anti-Mono zealots.
They attack anyone that shows respect for the Mono project and/or developers. Then, when they are made to look like the fools they are, they throw a temper tantrum proclaiming how they are being disrespected or oppressed, followed quickly by a blog post which gets immediately linked to as proof that Mono is evil on BoycottNovell – even though in 99% of the cases (just like this particular one), a representative of the Mono project wasn’t even present in the discussion/forum!
To top it off, no doubt Roy Schestowitz will now point to the various comments pointing out this guy as a troll to be proof that Novell and “Mono guards” are waging a smear campaign against him (when it’s obvious to anyone with more than a single brain cell that it’s him and his buddies waging a smear campaign against Mono!)
Sigh. The world would be a much better place without these assholes.
That said, I assume you are one of the FOSDEM organizers and for that I must thank you for your contributions. FOSDEM is a great conference and I wish I were able to go this time.
Keep up the good work!
on 06 Dec 2009 at 6:26 5.nlw0 said …
There are far too much FLOSS people concerned about mindless ignorant masses being controlled and pushed into this or that legal traps and proprietary technologies. They are often puppeteers themselves, trying to devise ways to “lock people into freedom” (eg the GPL).
We should just do our best to advertize whatever problems we see in tools (eg Mono patenting dangers), and if people still can’t get out of the shadow and see the problems for themselves, let them crash into the wall. “Saving” them is taking them out of ignorance, period. Let’s not waste our times with naïve political stuff like wanting pop stars to avoid doing things because it “sends messages”… If we can’t convince anyone only with good advices, maybe we don’t have a point. Or maybe they don’t want or deserve to be “saved”.
Messages are sent here, right now in blogs and comments like this, and in public arguments… I prefer much more to talk about things people said, and which ere meant to be said, than wonder about what ignorant n00bs will do or hallucinate when they hear that some pop star did something with some tool…
Maybe I’m just too low-level, is that it?
on 06 Dec 2009 at 17:15 6.reinout said …
To clear up any misunderstanding, I’m not one of the FOSDEM organizers (even though I manned the Gnome booth last year).